1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to automatic telephone dialing method and apparatus for devices such as telephone sets, which method and apparatus can be used commonly in a plurality of different countries.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have heretofore been well known in the art telephone sets and other telephonic devices such as facsimile transmitters which can initiate a call to a desired party by specifying an abbreviated address to read out the corresponding full address of the party. These devices have different specifications in different countries since the telephone systems vary in standards, criteria, and control systems from country to country. Except for Japan and United States where the telephone systems are identical, it has been necessary for suppliers to design, manufacture, and supply telephonic devices with automatic telephone dialers to meet the specifications of each country concerned. As a consequence, the number of designing and manufacturing steps and the cost of manufacture have been increased, and especially the cost of devices to be exported to those countries which import only a small number of such devices sometimes becomes prohibitively high that they can no longer be supplied.